


my fossil is bright in the sun

by reregulus



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (i was supposed to write dimifeli but. ), Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Heroic Relics, Pre-Canon, Specifically Golden Deer, Ten Elites, Unrequited Love, War of Heroes (3H), both blai and fral are women, but i also dont think 3h understood it either, its like artemis's curse from sd i g, mentions of the other elites + nemesis + saints + sothis, note: i dont rlly understand how the war of heroes works, there is gore but its not too detailed, three houses spoilers, title from sufjan stevens john my beloved, uh. ? prejudice against the nabateans? not sure how to tag that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reregulus/pseuds/reregulus
Summary: from the corpse of a dragon slain, fraldarius fashions a shield.[or, blaiddyd and fraldarius and the oaths they shared]





	my fossil is bright in the sun

**Author's Note:**

> hi!!!! i saw a lot of reference to the fraldarius loyalty curse to blaiddyd thing and i wanted to write a lil thing on it. i . dont really know what this is other than i took a lot of liberties and you know what, thats ok. in general i think the concept of the elites are really cool and i wish 3h went more into it, so this was my attempt.
> 
> edit: I.............. I wrote luin instead of daphnel i swear i know the difference

from the corpse of a dragon slain, fraldarius fashions a shield. it is bloody, at first, the way her hammer bends it’s skull, not yet completely cleaned, still clinging gore. the clangs are loud, resounding from empty forge, walls lined in a neon light and a still, haunting air. time lost its track long ago, minutes melding into hours, and no one to tell whether a day has passed in true. 

fraldarius is the only one who insisted she create her own. the rest is handled by the agarthan forgemasters, the swirl of their sinister sorcery surrounding the bones and still lazily beating hearts as blood slipped from their fingers and hammers. she had watched in silence, rapt. noting to herself which way she should hold the tool, for how long should she strike, how delicate and how rough to be with each one. 

the horrors done at their hands, that bloody sea left to crash through the canyon, the piles and piles of bodies. different forms, all of them, as if it were not evidence to damn them all. fraldarius had struck moralta’s blade across the neck of a little boy with emerald green hair and sharp, pointed ears, and he had wailed and wailed and wailed without end, even across the battlefield’s orchestra of death, his voice had carried far above, a plea to the goddess herself, a lonely son crying out for his mother in desperation, a final exaltation or perhaps a curse. 

how righteous, fraldarius had thought, if he had asked sothis to forgive her, to forgive all of their crimes, as she tore open his chest with moralta, crushed ribs with gorey hands, and held his heart, the beat pulsating against her flesh, the blood that she, that none of them, will ever be able to wash. how righteous. and how utterly useless. 

the atrocity, how the stars fall and apocalypse rises, oh the depths of ruin that twelve stand in its wake, is nothing short of necessity. 

lamine had taken her jewel, heart center and embraced by a crescent gold. riegan had taken his bow, muscle still adorning bone. gautier and daphnel and blaiddyd all had taken their polearms, stolen from the limbs of those children and named them as if they were mere metal and wood. 

fraldarius is the only one who chooses a shield. among all blades, fraldarius is the only shield. 

_ let it be born of your greatest desire, _ the prophet of agartha had told her,  _ let it serve your greatest wish _ . 

they fight for liberation. for the freedom of humanity over their oppressors, those  _ monsters _ who forced their neighbors to flee in fear. they fight alongside nemesis for agartha’s purpose. it is revenge for wrongs done, for the weakness forced upon them by blood and the sheer arrogance of the goddess’s children. 

_ i will use it to free our people. _ she had sworn, deep indigo drawn in conviction. 

but it is not why fraldarius fights. 

it is easier to say that the banner of flames is raised in her heart just as much as they raise it in the heaven’s, a testament to humanity’s already won strength ( _ your goddess is not strong, to be killed by a mere thief. where are her stars to protect her? her divine grace? her little children now running amok in fear because they have assumed too much of their power, and the lowly will always fight back. is she a true goddess, even? _ ) it damns her less if she names the same motivation as dear lamine and haughty gloucester. it promises that none will question her conviction, find it weak or foolish and cast her aside for considering such-

fraldarius had known the moment the prophet spoke. 

in the harsh winters of the north, the land where fraldarius was born, is where blaiddyd smiles the brightest. where her laugh carries over the freshly fallen snow and throws it up in the air and lets the snowfall crown the both of them. it is where blaiddyd had been born, too, scions of two different families, but true enough, both warriors’ daughters, brought together by their forefather’s heroism, raised on stories of legend even so early in the world’s infancy, of humanity’s ingenuity, of their compassion, of their curiosity that led them to take to every land under the goddess’s sky. it is where blaiddyd had ran with wolves and practiced her lance work, and fraldarius would welcome the pack as she tended to her pegasus. it is where dawns were spent in flight and the warmth of one around the other and the way blaiddyd would always place her hands upon fraldarius and take the reins over, flinging them across the sky to lands she had never seen and the fluttering in her heart that surely beat louder than moralta’s wings. 

_ “fraldarius, i cannot stand while they take and take and take from us.”  _

dusk fell over the trail, the sun descending below the mountains’ peaks. sunset’s amber crowned them both, indigo and gold, but blaiddyd’s question cutsthrough the solemn descent. “ _ we will not survive this, blaiddyd, we will not live to see the dawn of a day where we are free and they are gone”  _ fraldarius spoke because it had always been this way. she the font of wisdom and blaiddyd the blade of action. the knight remembered a childhood of always pulling blaiddyd away from conflict, from the moment she first learnt that the laws of reason bended to her will and she had started fires within the forest outside her family’s cabin and fraldarius had ran at the sign of smoke and carried buckets of water to put it out before it spread any further. 

blaiddyd pulled the reins on her steed to a halt and countered.  _ “and? do we live to imprison our children as well? or do we die to liberate them? i believe in nemesis.”  _ there is venom down her voice, blood down her words, and a future hanging in their balance. 

_ “he barely understood his power until now!” _ fraldarius exclaimed, having done just the same so that now the two of them would have been still, next to the other.  _ “he was nothing more than a common thief until they came to him.”  _

_ “then trust me, fraldarius.”  _ blaiddyd had pleaded, azure eyes as soft as the moonlight slowly descending.  _ “i will do this whether or not you come, but… i do not wish to do it if you are not there.”  _

_ “when have i ever not trusted you, blaiddyd? i trust  _ ** _you_ ** _ , but i do not trust nemesis, nor do i trust seiros. i trust myself, but scant else.” _

her eyes had widened then, shock finding its way through those eyebrows raised, and their slow return to placation on the dark knight’s countenance. blaiddyd nearly laughed, would have laughed, if it weren’t for the severity drawn on fraldarius.  _ “if you are so worried, then join me. who else can better protect me than you? who else can you trust, then, than yourself.”  _

yes, because at the end of fraldarius, at the beginning of fraldarius, there is that tiny, preordinate desire. that oath written in the lines of her being, that quiddity of her existence.  _ “no one.” _ and a sigh slipped out from her lips.  _ “no one but me. you know i always will. i swore as much when we were younger and you had wandered into the de-” _

_ “yes i remember.”  _ blaiddyd cut her off with annoyance.  _ “i know, fral. i thought you were joking then. when we were kids.”  _ that admittance came with the squeeze of her thighs and her dark mount resuming its trot. 

_ “i wasn’t. i’m still not.”  _

fraldarius holds the little boy’s heart in her hand, all rigor left it in its pale red, and places it into the recession she had hammered out. there is a gravity to the motion, she knows, the binding of a heart to its new body, that is irreversible, but fraldarius has no other thoughts. with a thin knife, she carves the symbol that had shined from her body when she had taken the blood into the heart. fraldarius only notices it now, that her crest resembles the shield itself. 

* * *

when they take to the tailtean plains, blaiddyd and fraldarius do not stray from each other. areadbhar imaples adrestian soldiers without hesitation from atop blaiddyd’s steed, and fraldarius is always above, swooping close to the ground to deflect strikes to blaiddyd, moralta and aegis working in tandem. 

to be the sword and shield, that is fraldarius’s desire, she realizes as the red canyon repeats itself. that is an oath she makes upon the corpses left to pile in their wake, to debase devotion with destruction, that if she falls, then it will be sacrifice, it will be loyalty, it will be a promise kept from the inception of the world to its bitter end. it is a promise made to that wailing nabatean boy that his death is a weapon to her own selfish desire, but at least it is purpose at all. 

in the end, nemesis falls at seiros’s hand, but they live on. they keep their spoils, they are given greater power than they had before. they are at the advent of a new dawn, but not the one blaiddyd would have died for. 

seiros still lives, awash in her golden light at adrestia’s helm. 

but fraldarius still lives. blaiddyd still lives. so do lamine and gloucester and riegan and all those others who would have given their life for the future of humanity’s freedom over the goddess’s cruel hegemony. 

there is little joy in their loss or their sudden victories. 

_ “fraldarius, you will come to my lands, won’t you?”  _

she had thought that such a silly question.  _ “of course, blaiddyd, so long as you promise to come to mine.” _ they are given territory in the north, the land of their birth, within the memories of leaning against each other in the flame’s heat and chasing blaiddyd through forest walks and fraldarius’s little grin when she managed to perfect her sword dance.  _ “we’re still the same, i think, at our cores.”  _ a silly thought, too, when they have wielded the corpses of gods against the heavens themselves, when they have lost wars and won bloody battles, that somehow they could still be little fraldarius and blaiddyd, two daughters of northern warriors. 

blaiddyd laughs, this time, and damn the sun itself, damn cethleanns songs, nothing could be brighter than blaiddyd, cheeks turning red and doubling over, golden hair falling about her shoulders.  _ “we’re a lot different, but you’re right. you’ll still be with me and i’ll still be with you.”  _

fraldarius wants to say  _ of course, i didn’t slaughter innocents, didn’t participate in this war, didn’t hold a beating heart in my hand, didn’t follow you around all this time, just to run from you.  _

instead, she says  _ “yes. i don’t know why you’re going over such obvious things. i swore an oath, if you can still remember.”  _

_ “i do, fraldarius.”  _

the shield nods.  _ “good.”  _

* * *

when fraldarius passes down aegis to her first child, and it passes from theirs to her grandchild, down the line of a milenia, she tells its purpose, to protect blaiddyd, to be their shield and sword, their wisdom and their solace, their rides at dawn and warmth at winter, and that, perhaps, in some miracle, their heart. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!!! <3


End file.
